Football Weekend 2009

For Tim's birthday, he asked his parents for tickets to the Georgia Tech vs. UVA Football Game. I'm not sure why, but he wanted me to go with him, so I drove to Charlottesville with the Larsen men and cheered the yellow jackets on (notice my color appropriate attire). We had second row seats! Notice the pretty leaves...

I am no longer a fair weather fan! Notice the little girl in the top left picture. She is standing in about 3" of water and completely soaked.
Don't worry, Scott's alma mater won and the rain let up just as the game ended.
We also got to visit Tim's old roommate Tyler and his new wife, Amy who are both in school at UVA. We had a good time with them but didn't get any pictures :( Tim says it's okay because Tyler was wearing a sweater, so you already know what he looked like.

Apples and Apples

It's time again for our annual apple picking extravaganza! With rain and near freezing temperatures, we drove up to Hartland Orchards to "pick" apples with our friends Megan and Philip. The apples on the trees were getting pretty sparse, so we just picked them out of the bins again. (It's especially fun for Tim because he gets to sample all the different kinds!) We also got the best caramel apple I've ever had; it was Delicious!

Hands on House and Bird in Hand

After our short trip to Hershey, we drove about 30 minutes east to Lancaster County, PA for our 1/2 marathon on Saturday. It was called the Hands on House 1/2 marathon to benefit the children's museum. Our course was really beautiful, but also full of hills. We ran through cornfields, hay fields, and farmhouses. We both started out too fast and got pretty tired the second half, but we both finished. I even got 4th in my age group! Some of Tim's work friends even came up to cheer us on and shop with us afterward. We can thank them for most of their pictures.
I'm not sure why the finish line picture is so small, but we made it anyway! Below, we're taking advantage of the after race snacks...the best part!

This is basically what we ran past most of the time. There were even Amish kids cheering us on! After the race we ran to our motel to clean up (although the front desk people weren't exactly happy that we were so late) and did a little sight seeing and shopping!



Amish people are so nice. I asked Tim if I could still me Mormon and Amish. He said some Mormons should.
There were a LOT of petting zoos! Check out the bottom middle picture in the collage-we're horses of a buggy!


This is Carla, Noelle, and Heather from Tim's work who came to cheer us on.

The Sweetest Place on Earth

You guessed it! We took a quick trip up to Hershey, PA last Friday. We ran a half marathon on Saturday in Lancaster, so we decided to make a trip of it.
Look closely at the street lamps...they're chocolate kiss shaped! Note the brown background to the picture in celebration of chocolate. Just like my shirt!
We started out at a new museum called the Hershey Story where we attended the "Chocolate Lab." In the lab we made mini candy bars and learned about chocolate origins and how the Mayans made warm drinks with the cacao. The ancient hot chocolate was a popular drink and before weddings, the women would try to create a lot of froth. They said the better the froth a woman could make, the better a wife she would be. The bottom middle picture was of me making froth to be a good wife.

We headed to Hershey's Chocolate World next for a factory tour (which we did twice) where the cows taught us it is "all about the milk" We finished with some yummy shopping!


Next stop...Amish Country!

Funny Things in Life

I haven't been posting as much lately, mostly because we haven't been doing much. I have been volunteering for all of the extra work hours I can, so I've been able to help at health screenings, 5K, and performing site inspections in the past few weeks which means other than our Utah trip, Tim and I haven't been too adventurous. We still love teaching our Sunbeam class at church. Today was an especially funny day, so I decided to start writing the funny things down to share.

I do have to mention that our ward is unique in that we have an apartment complex that houses employees of the Department of State (I've learned that this means they are the ambassadors, etc. in embassies of other countries). We constantly have kids moving in and out while their parents are between assignments. So far this year, we've had kids move to Egypt (a boy named Moses moved there, ha!ha!), Vietnam, somewhere in South America, and most recently Uzbekistan. Only three of our sunbeams have stayed consistent (and two are twins...guess which two) although we've always had at least six.

• A new girl (not pictured) moved in last week and was sitting in primary playing with a little hole in her tights when she ripped them completely apart. It was like she had a sock and separate leggings. She was on the end of the row, so I didn't see her until a teacher from the other sunbeam class motioned to me that she was crying. I had to take her out and we decided to discard of the entire thing. She had a new pair of tights this week.
• Today in primary the song leader (who was actually Michelle Prince!) was having a boy choose a picture of an apostle to see what song was on the back. The boy was taking a long time, so Michelle just picked one he was looking at and he said, "but he looks weird!"
• A while back we were learning about preparing to go to the temple and the teacher asked for some ways we can prepare. A boy raised his hand and very excitedly said, "we can pack our own suitcase!" Yep. That's right!
• Today we were having the kids choose some situations from cards I was holding out. One of our girls got up to pick one and Tim said, "Pick a winner." She very carefully chose one and then got a big frown on her face and said, "Did I pick a loser?"

Thats just a few, but I'll keep writing the funny things down!

Weekend in Utah!

We finally had the opportunity to take a vacation (now that the summer is over). I had been waiting to go for what seems like forever, so I was excited! We flew to SLC to visit grandparents, stayed a night at TJ and Kristen's, and spent Labor Day weekend in St. George before driving back up to SLC to leave. It was a lot of traveling, but we got to visit a lot of family and get my fill of nieces and nephews!

Kate and Jonas (above) and Makayla and Will (below)

Mom and Dad got us tickets to see Aida at Tuacahn. I highly recommend it!

My nieces and nephews are cuter than yours!

We celebrated Makayla's 4th birthday with a Unicorn Party. Look closely and you'll see we all got to wear unicorn horn and tails. My favorite picture is the one on the bottom row of the back of Jonas. He is made such a cute unicorn!

We finished our trip with a dip in the pool at Grandma's condo! The weather is already cooling and cloudy in VA, so I was glad I soaked up the St. George sun.

Grandma and Grandpa Lotz (I didn't get any pictures with Tim's Grandparents, but we had fun with all of them)I'm already ready to go back!

Our First Experience as Parents...

Tim and I had been wanting to go to the National Zoo since we moved here, but Zoo's are so much more fun with kids (we thought) and we don't have any. His home teaching companion needed a babysitter one Saturday, so we offered to take their two cute children to the Zoo. It all started out well until our Zoo time cut into nap time. We knew it. It was our own fault. Little Joe-Joe stopped having fun and threw a couple of tantrums in the middle of everyone on about the hottest day of the year. Luckily, we made it to see the main attraction, the elephants, and Sadie was an angel the entire time. All I can say now is that I'm glad parents get the chance to build up to the toddler tantrums. ...I have a lot of building to do.